World Bank Prescriptions and Structural Changes in Higher Education in India By Dr. Madhu Prasad

The crisis in higher education is endemic. Higher education requires to be greatly expanded – currently only about 10% of the relevant age group is engaged in higher studies. From 1950-51 to 2004-05, the number of universities increased from 28 to 348, colleges from 578 to 17,625. Although enrolment in higher education has registered a steep hike from 0.17 million to 10.48 million, in comparison the Chinese higher education system caters to nearly 23 million students. It is estimated that India needs at least 3,000 more post secondary institutions with an enrolment capacity of not less than 10,000 students to meet the increasing demand for higher learning. [Bhargava, P. (2006) `Knowledge and National Developement’, paper presented at the National Seminar on the Education Commission organized by NUEPA. New Delhi Dec. 2006]

In particular, the need to provide access to a wider section of the country's population, means that such expansion cannot be expected from, or left to, private agencies. The necessary rate of expansion would therefore only be possible with adequate public funding and regulation. Yet public funding is being withdrawn from this sector and the pressure is on to facilitate the entry of private players both local and foreign. In 1990-91, public expenditure, as percentage of GNP and Budgetary expenditure, on higher and technical education respectively, was 0.46 and 0.15 (% of GNP) and 1.58 and 0.51 (% of BE). By 2002-03 it was down to 0.40 and 0.13 (% of GNP) and 1.31 and 0.42 (% of BE). This represented a cumulative decline in budgetary expenditure from 2.09% to 1.72%, which by 2004-05 was further reduced to 1.60%. In higher education alone, the decline as a percentage of GNP is down to 0.34% (2004-05) from 0.46% (1990-01). [Source: GOI. Analysis of Budgeted Expenditure, various years.]

The impetus for the present strategy owes much to policy prescriptions from the World Bank and other international donor agencies that argued against the use of public funding for an expansion of higher education: “it is arguable that higher education should not have the highest priority claim on incremental public resources available for education in many developing countries, especially those that have not achieved adequate access, equity and quality at the primary and secondary levels. This is because of the priority these countries attach to achieving universal literacy; because the social rates of return in investments in primary and secondary education usually exceed the rates of return in higher education. . . .” [Higher Education: The Lessons of Experience. 1994. p3]. The WB report argues that primary education should be the priority for developing countries. Higher education is termed a private or quasi-private good as it allows the student-consumer to command a better market-value for her skills. Hence it was claimed that governments are justified in leaving development of this sector in private, i.e. commercial hands, as students will be paying for benefits that only they will enjoy. WB and other international donor agencies and consequently, national governments, treated higher education as a low priority `private good’ so that public investment in universities and colleges was asserted to be magnifying income inequality as only the elite sections dominated higher education. By 1997, the Finance Ministry, GOI, was aggressively advocating cuts in the `subsidies’ expended in this sector as higher education was termed a “non-merit good”. Although it revised this categorization in 2004 to a “merit 2 good” which could be provided subsidies but at a lower level, it must be noted that this was only the final blow. Higher education in India, as in much of the developing world, was crisis-ridden because it was chronically under-funded even as it faced escalating demand. “Resources are at the heart of the higher education dilemma. While student numbers have increased at a rate of more than 9 per cent per year for close to half a century, government expenditures increased by 2 per cent per annum and expenditures per student have actually declined by 2.9 per cent when measured against inflation.” [Dalip Swamy & Badri Raina. 1984]

Following WB recommendations, GOI focused its diminishing education expenditure on primary education, neglecting secondary and higher education (as luxury merit goods). Yet about 50% of those enrolled drop-out at the primary level itself and recent census data shows that 43.5% children between ages of 5 to 9 are not in school. The failure to halt or reverse this trend through the late-80’s and the 90’s can be placed at the door-step of several World Bank inspired interventions at the primary and elementary levels, (the DPEP, a variety of multi-track alternate and Non-formal schemes, multi-grade teaching and the use of poorly paid and ill-trained para-teachers), which radically altered policy and derailed the post-independence goal of a national system of quality education for all children, including the common neighbourhood school, as defined in the Kothari Commission in 1966.

The WB’s approach undermines the social necessity of an integrated system of adequate, quality education right from the elementary level to that of higher education. The capacity for critical, independent thought is both intellectually and democratically significant for a dynamic, independent and modern nation. It has to be the essential quality of the entire system of education. The claim that primary education has an absolute priority over the secondary and higher levels is practically so short-sighted that it is astounding: where would the trained personnel required for the success of the programme of universalizing elementary and then secondary education come from if not from a system of quality higher education? What is the purpose of providing elementary education if universal secondary education and the choice to enter higher education are not real possibilities?

The WB approach is exposed as one which is aimed at creating ‘alternate' educational `streams’ instead of an independent national system of quality education as was envisaged during the freedom struggle and promoted by policy makers in the first three decades or so after independence.

As a result of the WB’s influence, governmental policy in developing countries tended to view expenditure on higher education as a drain on the public purse, rather than an investment: “Many developing countries have showed apathy towards higher education, . . .reduced public investments in it, allowed laissez-faireism, and even adopted policies towards marketisation of higher education.” [J. B. G. Tilak “Are We Marching Towards Laissez-Faireism in Higher education development?” paper presented at IAU Sao Paulo Conference. July 2004]. “There is a concerted effort in many countries to reduce the reliance on state-funding and move towards market-friendly reforms.” [N.V.Varghese “Incentives and Institutional Changes in Higher Education”, Journal of the Programme on Institutional management in Higher education. Vol.16 No.1. OECD 2004].
“There is a widely-held view that the days of public-funding of higher education are over. . . .Institutions like the World Bank make no secret of their view that the best way to fund (higher) education is to put the whole cost on students. . . .they concede that the likelihood of such a policy being implemented is `very distant’. However, the prevalence of such views at a time when public finances are under strain could condemn state-funded education to death by a thousand cuts under the guise of promoting `alternative funding sources’.” [Conclusions of the first World Conference on Higher Education, Education International (incorporating the European Trade Union Committee for Education). March 1997]

With the intrusion of values of the marketplace into the higher education sector, it seems justified that users should pay for this `service’ as they would for any other. The pursuit of knowledge becomes a commercial transaction, and universities and other postsecondary institutions are expected to think less like educational institutions and more like businesses in order to generate their own funding. In Asian countries, and the campaign has intensified in India over the past fifteen years, the basic thrust has been that governments can no longer be relied upon to solely or even substantially finance this sector because the demand for its expansion exerts an unviable pressure on budgetary resources. Hence, the argument that institutions of higher education require to become `autonomous’, i.e. financially independent of public funding, and increasingly, of state regulation. In India, both the number of private educational institutions and enrolment in these institutions has shown a sharp increase since 2000-01. Unaided private institutions constituted 42.6% of total post-secondary institutions with an enrolment share of 32.89%. By 2005-06, this had shot up to 63.21% and 51.53% respectively. [Source: Anandakrishnan (2006)]
The WB approach that student-users should pay for educational services delivered to them, effectively denies access to properly regulated higher education of standard except for the very rich. With 17% of world’s population, India accounts for less than 1.7% of the world’s income. Its per capita GNP was $530 [US nearly $38,000; South Korea over $12,000]. Its `Purchasing Power Parity’ per capita income ranks 84th in the world. [WB figures, 2003]. The weakest sections, with the greatest financial strains and indebtedness, can access only the poorest quality higher or technical education. According to NSS data the government’s share in overall education expenditure has been declining steadily from 80% in 1983 to 67% in 1999. While private expenditure on education has risen 10.8 times in these sixteen years, that for the poor rose even faster, by 12.4%. Many students formally enrolled in publicly funded colleges and universities, pay considerable sums to the burgeoning private sector vocational IT training schools. The decline accelerated after this period. Public expenditure per student in higher education is nearly 30% less in the 2000’s than what it was in 1990-91. The proportion of scholarships in the public expenditure of states on higher education declined from 0.62% in 1990-91 to 0.24% in 2004-05. The decline for technical education for the same period was from 0.45% to 0.20%.

In 2000, the WB shifted its focus and “concluded that without more and better higher education, developing countries will find it increasingly difficult to benefit from the global knowledge-based economy.” [Peril and Promise: Higher Education in Developing Countries. Summary of Findings by the Task Force on Higher Education and Society. 1 March, 2000.] The Task Force claimed that “narrow. . .and misleading economic analysis” had led to the faulty conclusion that public investment in the sector brought meager returns. It no longer targeted higher education as “a luxury, it is essential to survival”. It pressed for “urgent action to expand the quantity and improve the quality of higher education” as “specialized skills” are “increasingly in demand in all sectors of the world economy”.

However, the report warned that the promise “will not be delivered if diversification continues to be chaotic and unplanned. Players new and old will thrive only in systems of higher education that develop core qualities. These include: sufficient autonomy with governments providing clear supervision, but not day-to-day management, explicit stratification, allowing institutions to play to their strengths and serve different needs, while competing for funding, faculty and students cooperation as well as competition. . .knowledge and ideas, profitably shared within the system (`learning commons’)”.

The significance of the report’s advocacy of the role of governments as effective supervisors lies in the recognition that “on its own, the market will certainly not devise this kind of system. Markets require profit and this can crowd out important educational duties and opportunities. Basic sciences and humanities. . . .are likely to be underprovided, unless actively encouraged by leaders in education who have the resources to realize their vision.” The responsibility of the state is to “concentrate on establishing the parameters within which success can be achieved”. The funding model is mixed – consistent and productive public funding mechanisms, and a maximization of the “financial input of the private sector, philanthropic individuals and institutions, and students.” It is not surprising that the private sector boom in higher education, referred to above, took off within a year and that private-public partnership became the new mantra of all official statements and committee recommendations.
The Ambani-Birla Report [A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education. Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. New Delhi 2000] explicitly gave expression to the role reserved for privitazation/ commercialization as the instrument for reform in higher education, which was inherent in the changing education policy initiatives. It argued that higher education should be left to private sector for an investment of 11,000 crores to double the number of institutions by 2015. It wanted the `user-pays’ principle in operation, with loans and grants for the needy. With the companion Model Act for Universities 2003, prepared by the UGC, it was intended to restructure higher education on the model of market-oriented enterprises promoting corporate values. The attempt was shelved because of strong opposition from academicians and teachers unions, but it is important to recognize that their opposition was well-founded:

· The character of higher education, which is directed towards the long-term goals of a knowledge based society, needs autonomy not only from governmental-bureaucratic institutions but also from market pressures;
· Higher education is the site for innovative foundational research and growth of knowledge. If it is reduced to mere transmission of operational technologies, the national society will remain at the mercy of external `providers’; A growing, autonomous higher education system is an indication of a mature society. At present, India has amongst the lowest percentage, even among developing countries, of the relevant age group studying in its universities. State funding is essential to ensure that adequate talent from all sections can gain access. The attempt to privatize higher education on the present narrow educational base would not present a viable alternative.
.
The next stage in the prescriptions for reform of the higher education sector, and the identification of new structures for regulation and co-operation between the disparate `players’ in the private sector and public/government was heralded with the launch of a WB study, entitled “India and the Knowledge Economy: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities”. [Carl Dahlman & Anuja Utz. Finance and Private Sector Development Unit of WB’s South Asian Region & The WB Institute. 28th June 2005.]

Micheal Carter, WB Country Director for India, states that the report is “an important Bank input into the domestic consultation and reforms process which will move India further into the global knowledge economy.” The report specifies its goals: “To create a sustained cadre of `knowledge workers’, India needs to make its education more demand driven” by `relaxing bureaucratic hurdles’ to allow the private sector to meet the burgeoning demand for higher education; by putting in place accreditation systems for private providers; by increasing industry-university partnerships in research and application including use of learning technologies for providing distance education across the board and for lifelong training and upgradation of skills.”

The Indian government is not advised to fulfill its commitment to invest at least 1.5% of GDP for higher education out a total of 6% for education as a whole. Instead it is directed to alter “its relatively closed economy” and “increasingly tap into the rapidly growing stock of global knowledge through channels such as foreign direct investment, technology licensing”. To spread the “explosive growth of ICTs” (concentrated mainly in urban centers, and covering 0.25% of the work force) the Government should promote the application of ICTs throughout the economy (access to telephones, mobiles, computers and connectivity, and enhancing ICT literacy and skills among the population). It states that knowledge economy does not “mean only high-technology industries or information and communication technologies. . . .In India, great potential exists for increasing productivity by shifting labor from low productivity and subsistence activities in agriculture, informal industry and informal service activities to more productive modern sectors, as well as to new knowledge-based activities”. The report places India “at the top of the bottom third of the global distribution” in the knowledge economy, [i.e. below Indonesia but above Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Pakistan, with a slight improvement over the decade1995-2005 in the KE Index]. Its future growth would depend on its ability to leverage its strengths [skilled workers in diversified science and technology sector with knowledge of English, impressive Diaspora with influence on both sides, one of world’s largest domestic market, institutions of free market economy with developed financial sector] and opportunities [creation of profitable niches in the IT sector, global provider of software application and testing services]. For this “it needs to undertake significant reforms and investments in building education and skills, strengthening its innovation system, and further bolstering its information infrastructure.” In particular this requires providing “effective economic incentives and institutions that promote and facilitate the redeployment of resources from less efficient to more efficient uses”.
The report calls for a “national `knowledge’ champion” to advance this agenda and identifies the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) as most “appropriate champion to coordinate and orchestrate the necessary knowledge-economy related actions across the various domains.” It lauds the National Knowledge Commission initiative to make timely recommendations for implementation.
India based and concerned `think tanks’ saw the timing of the report as “very opportune” for discussion among stakeholders. Sam Pitroda, Chairman, National Knowledge Commission, promised to “take into consideration the analysis and recommendations of the report as we design our strategy. We look forward to co-operating with the WB and other multilateral agencies as well as with think tanks and universities in India and abroad. . . .”

The companion Knowledge for Development Workshop held in November in New Delhi was aimed at moving from analysis to “identification of concrete key areas for action by different stakeholders”. The Workshop’s “endorsement” of the knowledge economy as a “critical element in the reforms agenda” calls for major reform and improvement across the board in the area of higher education and training. This was essential and urgent if the system of higher education was to become “more responsive to market needs” with “expanded access to education. . .for all, not just the elite”. [Press Release]
The urgency for increasing the pool of skilled IT and backroom specialists was one that was created in the highly profitable BPO sector, of which India accounts for over 80%. An Economic Times Survey of 200 large private companies in India in 2005 showed that the total wage bill for these companies had gone up by 23.50% in the second half of fiscal 2005-06 over the previous year. The wage bill rise was not offset by productivity gains. In the IT sector the impact was even more apparent. For 11 large software companies, the wage bill shot up by 42.5%, and the share of wages in sales was up from 37.9% to over 42%. Unless India increased its trained manpower strength by almost two-thirds and kept wages down, it would soon lose its competitive edge. [Economic Times. 8th November 2005] In fact the alarm continues to be sounded that BPO centers may close down as higher attrition rates and even higher wages become an increasingly pressing problem. The need to keep down competition from other Asian and African countries by maintaining a sustained supply of low-wage skilled workers is presented as a manifestation of the shortage of skilled manpower in India. The solution to the problem is therefore said to lie in sweeping reforms in the higher education system in India to integrate it fully as part of the global knowledge economy. The potential it is argued is immense if we can remain competitive, i.e. cheaper. It is anticipated that over the next few years over $356 billion worth of global financial services will shift to India, producing a cost saving of $130 billion for the top 100 financial service firms. The fact that the largest multi-nationals are now shifting their R & D centers to India is also related to the cost advantage. An Indian chip-designer costs at least one-fifth less than an American one.

The question to ask is whether an integration of higher education to the requirements of the global knowledge economy under these conditions would function as a short cut to establishing a knowledge society? BPO and software services to foreign, primarily US, firms have seen a decade of break-neck growth, although the sector accounts for only 0.25% of the workforce. It is argued that the promise of a rosy future will remain unfulfilled if growth remains chaotic and unplanned, as it must be accompanied by appropriate structural reforms.

It is impossible to ignore the fact that the software and IT-enabled sector are dovetailed to research, patents, and requirements of the developed world, mainly the US. On a visit to the US, the PM himself conceded that “American investments in India, especially in new technology areas, will help American companies to reduce costs and become more competitive globally. . . .The information technology revolution is built primarily on US computer-related technology and hardware.”(20/07/05). Indians are not competing on skills or superior education per se, but derive benefits because of low wages and the colonial heritage of the dominance of English. In the case of ITES workers, frequently referred to as “cyber-coolies”, the work is so repetitive and mechanical it is in danger of being eliminated. India may be producing more IT engineers than the US but it is less creative jobs like bug-fixing, updating antiquated code, and routine programming that are outsourced and fall to the lot of the Indian “foot soldiers” in the information economy. Body shopping is still a significant contribution of Indian firms to US companies. Even the small but rapidly increasing amount of higher value work (animation & web design, legal services, R & D, sophisticated financial services such as administering speculative funds) being outsourced is competitive because of lower wage costs.

Expansion of higher education by opening up the education market for domestic and foreign private institutions with the goal of integrating with the global knowledge economy, as recommended by the WB, need not therefore contribute to the founding of a knowledge society, although it would provide a sustained cadre of workers so that the low-wage advantages attracting MNC’s would be protected.

The WB’s 2005 report forms the background against which the procedure adopted by the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) becomes comprehensible and the nature of the recommendations, contained in its recently released document “Report to the Nation 2006”, can be analysed. The recommendations do not form part of an articulated structure and are haphazardly presented in the document. Crucial areas are not dealt with, while issues that would ordinarily be considered to follow from decisions in these areas, are dealt with in some detail. Interestingly, in spite of this hasty, `cut-and-paste’ quality, the recommendations are sweeping in their range and would introduce radical changes in the system of education currently prevailing in the country. This should not be seen as an inadequacy in the report but as essential to the exercise undertaken by the NKC - that of providing a series of recommendatory communications for implementation to the Prime Minister but with no final, consolidated report of its deliberations.

The NKC report aptly begins by stating that “only an inclusive society. . .can provide the foundations for a knowledge society” and regrets that “large segments of our society just do not have access to higher education.” because about 50% of children of the relevant age group either don’t enter or drop out at the primary school level itself. Those who clear secondary school with some learning constitute less than 30% of the relevant age group. As a consequence less than 10% of the relevant age group enter post secondary institutions. However, instead of concentrating on this “crucial area”, which is left for “a later date”, to be considered “in due course”, the NKC’s immediate recommendations focus on the expansion and far-reaching reform of higher education where it is stated “it is important to act here and now”. We see the impact of WB’s perspective in the tendency to conceive of far-reaching reforms at the level of higher education without reference to the goals and requirements of the system of education as a whole.

NKC has recommended major changes in the structure of regulation of higher education. A single Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE) to be set up by Act of Parliament, “would apply exactly the same norms [for setting criteria and deciding on entry, ending the regulatory functions of AICTE, MCI and BCI; authorizing degree-granting power; monitoring standards and settling disputes; licensing accreditation agencies to public and private institutions. . .to domestic and international institutions.” It is assumed that `opening up’ of higher education through this mechanism would facilitate the leap from 367 to 1500 universities by 2015, so that intake can be doubled to reach 15% of appropriate age group. The UGC would only disburse grants, and maintain public institutions of higher education.
Kept at arms length from the Govt., ministries (i.e. executive structures that are eventually answerable to the Parliament) and `other stakeholders’, the IRAHE sounds more like a `single-window access’ facilitating the entry of domestic and international capital, so favoured by the neo-liberal regime, rather than an adequate regulator for a system of education that is immensely varied historically, regionally and from the disciplinary point of view. But is even this likely to attract investment in a cash-strapped higher education system? Traders in educational services baulk at investment. Domestically this is evident in the phenomenal growth of private professional institutions. Of doubtful quality, these high-fee-charging institutions constitute a hugely profitable commercial sector. Foreign players, particularly those from the developed countries who are entering the sector in developing countries, appear to be no better in spite of their international reputations. Indeed by attracting wealthier or scholarship assisted students offshore and charging high fees, they can be seen as a significant part of the problem, opening new channels to the brain drain, expropriating profits and foreign exchange, besides dominating the local culture and opening it to a uniform `globalisation’, often better referred to as `MacDonaldization’.

Top

NKC recommends setting up of 10 exemplar national universities within 3 years, and 50 in the long-term. These could be established by government, private societies, charitable trusts or Section 25 companies. Significant founding grants from public funds, substantial allocation of public land in excess of spatial requirements as an assured source of further income generation, and raising student fee levels to a recommended 20% of total resources, are identified as revenue sources for such institutions. There is talk of `needs-blind’ admissions with financial support for every meritorious candidate, but absolutely no recommendation as to how or where the huge sums this would require is to be generated within 3 years. A proposed National Scholarship Scheme does not appear to have remembered the resource crunch that was offered as the major motivation behind the NKC recommendations facilitating entry of the private sector in higher education.
Corpus funds take time to build, and alumni contributions, philanthropic endowments, are obviously only secondary sources. [It is necessary to distinguish these private sources from the private `for-profit’ institutions that are rapidly transforming the provision of higher education into a highly competitive and profitable commercial enterprise]. Land, and feeding the impending realty boom, in which the Indian corporate sector and foreign financial institutions have an overriding interest, appears to be the major recommendation of NKC. Public funds and assets are to be transferred therefore to private investors through a policy aimed at creating “special educational zones”, with further incentives being indicated to attract foreign institutions.

These “centers of excellence” would, (besides undertaking revision of courses, introducing internal assessment, credit system, establishing a better teaching/ research component, and ensuring an adequate upgradation of academic support systems), effect a changed balance between salaries and pensions on the one hand and maintenance, development, and innovation on the other. This would result from an altered `market’ approach towards “resource allocation, reward system and mindset”. Better working conditions, differential salaries across and within universities, and other financial incentives (to compensate for `loss’ of positions in developed countries) are recommended as the primary means to attract and keep `better’ faculty. Finally, after having provided for a “level playing field” with exactly the same norms for both domestic and international institutions, the NKC recommends that appropriate policies would have to be formulated to attract foreign institutions and their faculty to India.

NKC recommends that existing under-graduate colleges be de-linked entirely from the universities. While some prestigious ones, individually or in clusters, would become autonomous, the rest would be brought under central and state boards of under-graduate education. Although the mode of association between under-graduate and post-graduate institutions certainly calls for creative reform, it appears a little extreme to cut all links between the two. Affiliation, based only on recognition and examination, which NKC is opposed to, is not the only form of association. At any rate, affiliation through franchisee or twining relationships between foreign and domestic private players remain permissible within NKC’s recommendations. A federated university with constituent colleges like the Delhi University has proved its strength, even in the present crisis situation in higher education, in adequately feeding both instruction and research at the university level.

A system of education requires linkages between its different components. Only such a system would be able to recognize and encourage excellence wherever it exists. The challenge posed by this approach has to be taken up if an inclusive system of education as the foundation of a knowledge society is to be established. The alternate strategy outlined above of concentrating `excellence’ in pampered enclaves contributes, on the one hand, to creating mediocrity in neglected institutions outside the circle of excellence, and on the other, produces intellectuals who are distanced from the conditions and problems of a developing society. The experience of already existing “centres of excellence”, the majority of whose alumni live and work in developed countries, has to be taken seriously. The so-called reverse brain drain being talked about now only lures individuals back by promising differential benefits and working conditions in a new neo-liberal India.

NKC’s recommendations relating to the democratization of structures of governance of higher education are disturbing. The size and composition of university courts, senates, academic and executive councils, “which slow down decision making processes and sometimes constitute an impediment to change” are to be altered on a priority basis. Democratic norms, responsible for both composition and size, are certainly `slower’ than authoritarian impositions, but what should be the priority in an independent higher education?
A `deprivation-index’ as the recommended form of `affirmative action’ is conceptually problematic and practically susceptible to subversion through manipulation. It is also a barely concealed attempt at undermining the Lok Sabha’s unanimous acceptance reservation policy. This raises questions of the political motivations behind NKC’s recommendation.

NKC’s recommendations regarding the language policy that should guide higher education are simplistic and even alarming. Language is significant, the report states, not only as a medium of instruction, but, especially in the case of English, as “an important determination of access to higher education, employment possibilities, and social opportunities”. A feature marking the accommodation of the Indian elite to colonial rule and administration is readily seen by NKC as a necessary step towards a wider accommodation to the global knowledge economy today. The report states that “. . .the time has come for us to teach our people – ordinary people – English as a language in schools”, and recommends that from Class I (i.e. at 5 years of age) children should learn English and it could even be the medium of instruction for some subjects from Class III onwards. NKC’s focus for “teacher training, language pedagogy and resource support” is on the English language. While this reflects WB’s projection of the colonial heritage of English as a major advantage in integrating into the global economy, it is surprising that NKC appeared not to have considered how this would impact Indian languages and cultures, already disadvantaged by 150 years of the colonial dominance of English, and how it would diminish the ability of `our people’ to develop an independent, self-confident sensibility and knowledge.

In response to the first major set of recommendations made to the PM in Report 2006, one can conclude that NKC believes that far-reaching changes are urgently required to bring higher education in India in line with the needs of the global knowledge economy. Its recommendations are neither creative nor enthusing, but merely accommodative to a given global economic system.
It is unfortunate that NKC did not consider how different its recommendations would have been, if it had kept before itself the vision of an inclusive system of education, and the urgency of devising ways of implementing that goal, so that India could have begun to emerge as an equal partner in a truly global knowledge society. As it stands, NKC’s Report to the Nation represents one more lost opportunity.

Two Bills relating to radical changes in the higher education sector require to be considered to see the impact of WB’s thinking on the reforms process. Although they have been held in abeyance due to stiff opposition from different sides of the `stakeholder’ divide, they provide a good indication of government’s intentions and the impact of the earlier trends. The Foreign Educational Institutions Bill (2007) claims to regulate the entry and operations of foreign educational institutions to protect students, ensure quality education and stem commercialization. However, its features encourage fee hikes; offer loopholes in institutional partnership conditions like twinning arrangements that leave open the door to substandard courses; and give the government arbitrary powers to exempt institutions from the regulations, and even to partially subsidize these FEI’s through generous development grants!

A Private University Bill was introduced in 1995 to provide for the establishment of self-financing institutions. This followed the Supreme Court’s judgements banning capitation fees in private colleges (1992), but allowing for high fees in the name of self-financing courses (1993). The Bill provides for a private university to have a permanent endowment of Rs. 30 crores, because government earlier had had to bail out institutions, and to provide 30% full scholarships to students. In 2005, the uncontrolled growth of the self-financing sector resulted in the Private Professional Education Institutions (Regulation of Admission and fixation of fee) Bill. It stipulates the conditions to be met before an institution can charge fees and seeks to restrict the term `foreign institutions’ only to those institutions which are duly accredited as `foreign education providers’.

The impact of WB strategies has directed the reforms process of higher education away from its national problems, conditions and environment, to the requirements of the global economy. India is not a knowledge economy. A recent study showed that 77% of the population lives on Rs. 20 or less per day. India has the largest number of illiterates in the world. Its primary and secondary school education is totally inadequate. While even a minimal public health service is beyond the reach of most people, Indian doctors man national health services in the UK, Canada and other developed countries. India ranks 127th among 175 countries on the UN Human Development Index. One out of every eleven children dies before age five; ¾ of rural and ½ of urban population do not get even the recommended minimum calorie intake [National Sample Survey, 2000]. “Over 350 million people are below the average food energy intake of sub-Saharan Africa countries.” [Utsa Patnaik. “It is time for Kumbakaran to wake up.” Hindu. 05/08/05].

Yet finding solutions to these national problems finds no reflection in the process of reforms being advocated for the development and improvement which will dovetail Indian educational and other systems to the needs of the global knowledge economy. The WB’s report (2005) completely ignores the question of unemployment. The number of jobless in India grew by more than 3 times in ten years [13.8 million in 1991 to 44.5 million in 2001]. Of the 36.7 million literate unemployed, 4.8 million were graduates. Nor is integration in the global knowledge economy likely to alter this trend. Internationally in 2003 an estimated 186 million persons were “without work and looking for work”, with the youth unemployment rate at 14.4% being more than twice as high as unemployment overall at 6.2%. [D. C. Misra. “India well positioned to take advantage of the knowledge revolution says a new World bank report”. Digital Divide Network]

Our unique selling point, it is argued following the WB’s vision, is our pool of skilled manpower, which we need to continue to grow to maintain our competitive edge. Hence the exclusive focus on expanding and improving the quality of higher education; freeing it from any democratic national controls and regulation; putting it in the hands of domestic and foreign private players who can profit from creating the required skilled knowledge workers; and finally offering up this trained cadre, constituting only a small percentage of the work force, to international corporations so that their profit margins may be protected in a fiercely competitive knowledge economy market.

The WB perspective dovetails smoothly with the perspective underlying the WTO-enforced General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which converts knowledge into a tradeable commodity. The increasingly competitive sphere of a globalized system of higher education is dominated by the industrialised developed countries. Norms, values, language, concerns and scientific innovations at this centre crowd out other ideas and research practices. These countries not only have the dominant institutions but are also home to the multinational corporations that are becoming so powerful in the new global knowledge system based on marketing intellectual ‘products'. In a world clearly divided into `centres' and `peripheries', with pronounced inequalities, the developing countries must be prepared to see that self-reliance and sovereignty would obviously be adversely affected.

Higher education institutions in developing countries have a special role to play in the strengthening of civil society and national development. If subjected to WB and WTO perspectives and strictures, they would not only be unable to perform this function, but the very idea that universities serve a broad public good would be undermined.

Dr. Madhu Prasad
Reader, Dept of Philosophy
Zakir Husain College
University of Delhi

Founder Member
People’s Campaign for Common School System

Residential Address:
D-12 Gitanjali Enclave
New Delhi – 110017.
e-mail: madhuchopra@hotmail.com